RA4 PAPER: Global challenges facing plant ...

Global challenges facing plant pathology: multidisciplinary approaches to meet the food security and environmental challenges in the mid-twenty-first century

May 2021

Jeger M, Beresford R, Bock C, Brown N, Fox A, A. N, Vicent A, Xu X, Yuen J. 2021. Global challenges facing plant pathology: multidisciplinary approaches to meet the food security and environmental challenges in the mid-twenty-first century. CABI Agriculture and Bioscience 2(20): 1-18.

ABSTRACT

In this review we emphasise, in particular: the multidisciplinary links between plant pathology and other disciplines; disease management, includ-ing precision agriculture, plant growth and development, and decision analysis and disease risk; the development and use of new and novel plant protection chemicals; new ways of exploiting host genetic diversity including host resistance deployment; a new perspective on biological control and microbial interactions; advances in surveillance and detection technologies; invasion of exotic and re-emerging plant pathogens; and the consequences of climate change affecting all aspects of agriculture, the environment, and their interactions. We draw conclusions in each of these areas, but in reaching forward over the next few decades, these inevitably lead to further research questions rather than solutions to the challenges we anticipate.

KEYWORDS

Plant pathology and multidisciplinary approaches; Disease management; Genetic diversity; Plant microbiome; Exotic plant pathogens and plant health; Climate change impacts;